July 25, 2008
Posted by Ryan Graves
F8
As many know Facebook held their annual developers conference yesterday at the San Fransisco Design Center. The agenda (shared below) emphasized three main changes coming to FB: more sharing, simplification, and getting developers more involved. There were a few main sites that will now be much more integrated with Facebook such as Digg and Seesmic! The live blog of that event was covered extremely well over at TechCrunch.
The question that was never answered fully is one that Max Levchin founder of Slide asked, “is Facebook going to create more contracted agreements with app development houses?” I can see why Max would obviously love that as one of the premier app developers. However, I don’t see that as such a great thing for Facebook or the development community as a whole. If Facebook starts entering into contractual relationships with the “big swinging dicks” of app development (Slide, RockYou) then the “little guy” development houses will not be able to participate or continue to feed the Facebook app community with innovative ideas. Keeping things open and available for anyone has been the strategy for Facebook to grow their development platform since the beginning and judging by the excitement and attendance of yesterdays event it looks likes it has been working quite well!
So Mark, listen, keep the platform open. Give the little guys a chance at “making it big”. There are a lot of great start-ups out there that would love to use the Facebook platform to change the way people use the web but if you cut “deals” with these big dogs of the FB app world the small man is out of the game. Give’m a chance.
*I just saw this morning that my Facebook profile has been updated and wanted to share a small portion of the new look.
Agenda:
12:00 – 1:30 pm: Doors Open
Registration & Exhibitor Area Open
1:30 – 3:00 pm: Keynote, Mark Zuckerberg
3:30 – 4:15 pm: Breakouts Round 1
User Experience: Introducing the New Facebook Profile & More
Technical: Building to Facebook Scale
Business: Building a Business on Facebook
4:30 – 5:15 pm: Breakouts Round 2
User Experience: Integrating Facebook Connect into your Website
Technical: Advanced App Building
Business: Marketing your App on Facebook
Workshop: App Building 101
5:15 – 6:00 pm: Break
6:00 – 6:45 pm: Breakouts Round 3
User Experience: Building Great Applications on Facebook
Technical: Feed & Social Distribution
Business: Entreprenuership on Facebook Platform
7:00 – 7:45 pm: Breakouts Round 4
User Experience: Design & User Experience at Facebook
Technical: Made for Mobile
Business: fbFund – A look inside – Seeding Opportunity on Facebook
Workshop: Taking your Platform Application Global
8:00 – 12:00 am: After 8 Celebration
*Photos courtesy of Brian Solis
